Column: Long lost family heirlooms found in La Grange antique store

Two treasured family heirlooms thought lost forever have been found in a La Grange antique store.

Chubby & Nubby’s Junque (referred to by locals simply as “Chubby Nubby’s”) —at 2056 Albert Sugg Road — is in many ways a pop culture museum. Sure, the N.C. Museum of Art may have dibs on Rembrandt and Renoir, but Chubby & Nubby’s has Mr. T’s Christmas album on 8-track, an unopened roll of “Empire Strikes Back” toilet tissue and the novelization of “Breakdancing 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

“I have no issue with high society art, but the type of unfiltered Americana that Chubby Nubby’s deals in is what interests me,” said Kelvin Morgan of La Grange. “If I hadn’t come across a giant box of hair metal cassettes at Chubby Nubby’s, I would’ve never discovered the song ‘When the Children Cry’ by White Lion.

Morgan’s other recent Chubby Nubby purchases include a spittoon used on the set of “The View” and an out-of-print VHS tape of Kool Moe Dee hosting a wrestling match between Roxxane Shante and Cyndi Lauper.

“Sadly, someone recorded a few minutes of ‘Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper’ over the middle of the fight, but it’s still riveting,” Morgan said.

Although La Grange residents such as Morgan constitute much of Chubby Nubby’s business, vacationers from all of over the country routinely stop in on their way to the N.C. coast. One such person is Rene Teller of Stanford, Calif.

“We have family in Beaufort and visit them every summer,” Teller said. “For years, we’ve passed Chubby Nubby’s on the highway but never took the time to stop, usually because my husband was driving and he refused to stop the car unless it was on fire. This year he gave in and decided to stop at the store, and I was shocked at what I saw when we got inside.”

Rene’s father, Edward Teller (1907-2002), was a physicist who was a key player in the Manhattan Project and also played a major role in the development of density functional theory and the McMuffin.

“Father was a brilliant physicist,” Rene Teller said. “Since his work was so demanding, he was always on the lookout for recreational activities. He tried the things you’d suspect — chess, panda roping — but his greatest recreational passion was tractor pulling.”

When Edward Teller passed away in 2002, Rene says two of her father’s prized tractor pull trophies were mistakenly donated to a Goodwill thrift shop in California. Somehow over the next 11 years, the trophies made their way to Chubby Nubby’s in La Grange.

“I burst into tears as soon as I saw those trophies,” Rene Teller said. “Father had awards and commendations from U.S. presidents and world leaders on display in his office, but he was always proudest of the tractor pull trophies — even though he was eventually banned from competing.”

“Teller was viewed as a bit of a show-off,” Block told The Free Press. “Since he was a gifted physicist, he’d show up at major tractor pulls with nothing more than a Cub Cadet riding mower and just leave the competition in the dust — or mud, as it were. Not only would he pull the same weight as the guys with the big tractors, he’d do it twice as fast.

“Eventually, the NTPA (National Tractor Pullers Association) got wise to him and banned all nuclear fusion-based engines and anyone who’d ever used them. They knew something was up when he was able to cook a whole turkey in 30-seconds by just holding it close to his engine.”

Teller’s family is currently campaigning to have Edward Teller’s ban lifted so that he could become eligible for induction into the Tractor Pull Hall of Fame in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“It’s unfair that even in death, Papa is still banned from the sport,” Rene Teller said. “Yes, he was showing off a bit when he used his nuclear-powered riding mower to drag Piggly Wiggly around the parking lot after winning a tractor pull in San Francisco, but he was just the Dale Earnhardt Sr. of his day.”

Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase Jon’s book “Making Gravy in Public” at Amazon.com or jondawson.com.